FEARS are growing for around 86 migrants after three boats disappeared on the same route from Algeria to the Balearics in one weekend, with only four confirmed survivors.
The disappearances happened in three separate incidents between Friday, August 14 and Sunday, August 16, according to Alarm Phone, a Europe-based hotline that migrant boats call for help at sea.
The first boat, carrying 32 people, sank after leaving Boumerdes, a coastal town in northern Algeria, on August 10.
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A German-flagged fishing boat found five survivors adrift 24 hours later, though one of them died either on board or during the rescue, leaving four confirmed alive and 28 people unaccounted for.
The wreck happened inside Algeria’s search-and-rescue zone, an area of sea Algeria is responsible for coordinating rescues in, which explains why the incident was never reported to Spain’s Salvamento Maritimo, the national sea rescue service.
Caminando Fronteras, a Spanish migrant-rights group that tracks deaths on this route, told Mallorca daily Ultima Hora the missing include people from Mali, Ivory Coast and Guinea.
Two more boats went missing on Sunday, both travelling the same Algeria-to-Balearics route and both entirely separate from Friday’s wreck.
The first left Tipaza, a port town west of Algiers, carrying 26 people, while the second is reported to have left Boumerdes again, this time with 32 people aboard.
Alarm Phone said it alerted Salvamento Maritimo to both boats, which was still searching for them as of Sunday but had not located either one.
Neither the International Organization for Migration’s missing migrants database nor Salvamento Maritimo’s own public channels had logged either incident as of Monday.
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The disappearances came in the same weekend that saw 179 people reach the Balearics safely across nine boats, according to Spain’s central government delegation in the islands.
The largest group, 31 people, was intercepted off Cabrera, a small island south of Mallorca, on Friday morning, while the smallest, nine people, landed at Playa Cala Esmeralda near Santanyi in south-east Mallorca on Saturday.
Salvamento Maritimo has given no update on the search for the two missing boats since Sunday.
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